“We can’t just leave these people.”
“The mission is over,” Ki Hao insists. “We were called to assist with removing an internal issue in this place, and now this place is gone.”
“Are you suggesting we leave the evacuees? That we should run with our tails between our legs?” Gou Mai almost growls. For all his usual cheer, standing there shirtless and with scars still fading from his earlier dance, his gaze is sharp as steel. His hand hovers on his blade, as if ready to challenge the younger cultivator over his cowardice.
“No! I’d never dishonor my oaths or my sect with such cowardice. Of course we aid the evacuation, but there’s no reason to kill ourselves to save a dead fortress. We defend what we can, and we let go of what we can’t.”
Mei Yu sighs, shrugging. Her wounds seem to have disappeared faster than any of theirs, and whatever technique she used also seems to have fixed (or affixed an illusion over) her robes. It seems to have visibly drained her in the process.
“As loathe as I am to say it, the Blessed Clouds cultivator here is right. If we try and fight our way out to the front lines or slay the grander dangers, we’ll only perish. Defending the evacuees is the only right choice.”
Gou Mai clenches his teeth hard enough to grind them, his cultivation cycling. It’s quiet from his own exhaustion, but that’s secondary- with his techniques, his ability to magnify his power and impact the higher he “climbs”, he’s possibly in the strongest position out of them all. Especially with Shin Ren’s state.
The prodigal leader has yet to speak more than a few words since the beast in human flesh left them. Clearly they had some sort of history, but how that thing had survived a tribulation centered on him, none of them can answer. And if he can… he isn’t speaking.
“...fine. Fine! But we hold until all have left behind us. We are at least partially to blame for this destruction. We failed to complete the mission we were assigned, and while none can predict a Tribulation, it was still our arrival which caused it. We need to repay this failure.”
Mei Yu shakes her head softly, her mask only half-on. “Like you said, no one could have predicted a Tribulation. It nearly killed Shin Ren, and while his survival should be celebrated, our own is nowhere near guaranteed. It is the honor of the Blessed Clouds and Divine Veil sects to defend the Empire always, but even our sects would not demand from us single-handedly overturning a failed siege.”
“Fine! I agreed. Too much weight only ruins a climb, I know. I just…”
“No,” Shin Ren says.
They all turn to look at him, hidden as they are in the cave of debris around them. He’s sitting still, the glow of multi-hued flames flowing off him the only light in the chamber.
There’s a new tint at the edge of them. Gold and Purple, Truth and Mystery, Red and Black, Violence and Death… but now there are flickers of fusion. Between Purple and something else.
But he can feel it now. Deep down, wrapping around the rest of him. The moment he touched that sea of Concept, the timeless instant where he saw himself reflected in the eye that is infinite…
There is more to Flame. There is more to existence. There are further limits, deeper seas, and sights yet unseen across the horizon.
Just the tiniest touch of Blue, flickering along the edge of his Flame. Limitless. Five of the seven colors of Dao, reflected in fire.
“No.”
“No to… what?” Ki Hao asks, his brow furrowed.
“There’s no such thing as a ruined climb. Even falling is distance traveled.”
“...all well and good, honored brother, but I’m afraid we still have to leave, lest our fall lead only to death.” Mei Yu gives him an appraising look. “Are you… alright? That was an impressive light show you survived.”
He laughs. Low and soft, and flickering with flame.
He gets to his feet quietly, marveling at the power inside him. He looks inside himself, at what he is, deeper than his body. Deeper than his Dantian. Deeper than even his Qi. Towards who and what he IS.
Then he blinks, and he’s back in the moment.
It’s so much. All of existence is so… much. And so is he. Infinities inside infinities. The sight that the Tribulation showed him is gone, but the edges of it are so close.
“Come on. You’re both right. We get to the evacuations, but… we go loud. Not skulking. Let them come, and if they don’t we shall go to them.”
He walks over to the closest wall and waves his hand.
It costs so little. All Things Burn, true, and Qi, flavored by his cultivation towards Flame, burns especially easily. The Tribulation didn’t renew him, not with Qi, but it’s just so easy now, so simple to use.
All Things Burn.
But it’s not just about burning, is it? Flame is about ignition. Combustion. Some things burn immediately, others burn slow. It’s alchemy, it’s the motion of the smallest pieces, it’s… vast. And it goes deeper than he can see.
And that extends to other things, too! Not just flame.
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It’s Dao all the way down.
So when he waves his hand, he doesn’t force the Flame to consume everything. He doesn’t push it, fuel it with Qi so that it overwhelms the laws of reality.
He just… nudges a little.
The wall melts into a beautiful magma, the heat of the transformation reshaping it into a tunnel. Natural light from outside and the sound of combat flood in as if they were always there, waiting at the door to come in.
It cost him less to melt a tunnel through twenty feet of stone than it did to throw a fireball.
With a gesture of will, his Guandao lands in his hand, and he walks out.
His friends and allies follow behind them, some of them struggling, but all of them just… looking at him. Watching how he moves.
He steps out into the world, and he sees a god staring back at him.
The Divine Beast takes in its beak an infinite void as it vomits steel and fire and the concepts they hold back at it… and swallows. It stares down at him without eyes, three of seven beaks emerging from a winged orb of fluttering quicksilver.
The realms of beasts might not be like the realms of men, but if he might equate it to something… it’s strong. Stronger than anything he’s seen in person. Stronger than his sect leader, at the peak of Nascent Soul in the third ring. Stronger, directly, than anyone he’s met in the second ring so far. Warrior realm, perhaps, or some equivalent, and not in the early stages of it.
He can’t burn it. It does burn, if put alight, but he does not have the capability.
But it breathes.
And the air in its lungs burns just fine.
He sweeps his Guandao up in a sweeping motion, and the air along its tip ignites, and ignites further, chain combustion pushing the fire to spread evermore- and he directs the combustion towards the striking beaks coming towards him, and down their throats.
The Divine Beast hacks out a cough, pulling back- and he moves forward into the intervening space.
He feels his friends moving, traveling towards the evacuation point, towards others that need their help. But for him…
The flicker of Blue.
The moment of comprehension. The glimpse of greater sights.
Limitless.
Truth and Mystery both are Limitless. Violence is Limitless, as is Death. And yet, to be truly Limitless is to die, to become one with all. To be Limitless is to have nothing which can stop you from Violence, and guarantees its existence. Anything Limitless is, in and of itself, both True and Mysterious.
Five of the seven colors. Comprehension of the greater All, reflected in a singular chosen element. Perhaps he will expand that comprehension, add other Truths and Daos to it, find comprehension reflected in other ways, in other places.
But for now… one is enough. One is good. One is infinite.
And there is so much deeper to dive.
Five out of seven.
All Things Burn.
Choice Is Universal.
He reaches inside his Souls, and they all call back. Each and every part of his multitude of self, singing a chorus.
They give the Flame the Choice to burn… and they say yes.
The Many-Heron screams out of seven mouths, three of them exploding in fire as every breath ignites over and over and over. It retreats backward, a single technique moving it further away than multiple War Daemons deployed in haste.
And that’s fine. Shin Ren doesn’t need to win. Why would he? He’s not trying to kill and die for nothing. The fortress is dying, he can feel that much in his bones, feel it in how the Flame wants to rush to consume dead material as fuel. There are no people around that it might consume, not when the entire fortress is half empty.
The Many-Heron spits out Flame, a wash of its own Qi flooding out of its mouths and bleeding the Flame out from it. It advances again, its mouths making a sound between a squawk and an ear-piercing siren, coming towards him.
And he flies away. Smiling wide, he just… leaves.
It’s on the edge of his vision. Tickling the edge of his awareness. That world he saw in his Tribulation, the reflection of existence in the eyes of impossible beings, himself reflected right back into them. The memory is still fading, still indistinct, he can tell he’s not meant to remember it. It doesn’t fit inside the meat of him, it barely fits inside the Souls of him, but it’s so close. Just a single head-tilt away, like a picture made to hide another picture if he can just see it right.
The air beneath his feet is asked if it would Choose to burn, and enough of it says yes that it is so, so easy to ignite. He flies on plumes of multi-hued flame, fading to traditional colors the further out it goes, and the Many-Heron moves at impossible speed behind him, each stab of a beak pulling it a thousand meters towards him.
He sees the battlefield ahead. The edge of the Wall.
It is the most horrible place he has ever seen. That he could ever have thought of. It’s the world made wrong, a flat expanse of earth ending in a Wall five hundred feet high. It is washed in the endless blood of so many lives, of many-limbed and armored bioconstructs against hordes and swarms and schools of creatures that warp reality in a million unique ways. The few soldiers that remain make bullwarks out of the bioconstructs still falling from the mouths of the fortress city, even as their numbers dwindle and cease to be replenished.
He lands on the battlefield in joyous exhalation, and sings out a prayer. His beads are a Guandao, his sutra, the crackling of Flame, his intent, the joy of comprehension.
Enlightenment rings on the battlefield and tears it apart.
Choice Is Universal. All Things Burn.
He gives all things around him a Choice, and so very many of them choose to Burn, five different colors remaking all that is.
He hears laughter, loud and bright even amidst the carnage. He sees a color similar to the one he just uncovered, a Limitless Blue singing in a clear sky atop a forever-climb to the heights, and soon, a blade, dancing to the steps of his closest ally, sings a serenade through the lives around it. He hears the pealing of thunderclouds as Hi Kao makes himself useful, painting the Blue sky in the gold of Truth as clouds and lightning and rain all play across the world.
And he feels a whisper of mist, of glass and redirection, touched with a Truth all his own.
Mei Yu lands beside him in the closest patch of soldiers, the last few holdouts trying to retreat and selling their lives dearly, and a multitude of powers and effects warp, redirected and filled with new rules. She dances in a way all her own, filling the air with mist and glass- and something else beneath it, a Truth her own as well.
The vision is fading, but… he still saw it.
He spins his Guandao, igniting a conflagration that combusts off of itself and spreads, shaping it into swords and limbs and tendrils that tear apart all that gets too close. It’ll only be moments before they’re overwhelmed, but the longer each individual piece holds, the sooner the whole can retreat properly.
He unleashes all that he has.
A perfect pillar of Flame, Gold and Purple and Blue, rises up into the Heavens from within him. It crowns a shifting mass of molten limbs and grasping biology, crackling in carbon and wax and touching the world with Red and Black. Dancing between them, reaching out and darting back, shaping events to happen just so as it further warps and wields the mist and glass all around, a feline thing of gilded metals and glittering gems and a smile so wide it carves the world apart.
[Divine Purity Of Flame], [Burning, Grasping Ruin] and [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] all appear on the field, glimpsed by those with eyes to see, and turn all that is into fire and transformation.
And throughout it all, reflected in his friend’s dance, the flickering of Blue.